Category: personal growth

your intention

Its not what you do but how you do, is what I have been told time and time again, but do we really realize how true it is? How many times have you said yes to something that you really didn’t want to do, for reasons like obligation, or not disappointing someone, guilt? But if it is really true, that its not what you do but how, doesn’t the “how” that you are not doing it out of pure joy and desire negate any possible positive impact from saying yes?

If you are martyring yourself or would rather be elsewhere, and you say yes to that invitation, the energy you are bringing to the interaction or date or dinner or event is not going to be positive. What if you made the decision to stop trying to be everything to everyone and focused on being the one complex thing that you are? What if you gave up trying to please everyone and really got to know yourself and what brings you joy?

I’ll tell you what if. When you begin making decisions based on your values and truly what aligns with them its a game changer. You will suddenly find a tremendous feeling of peace. You will appreciate the freedom of being where you are, because you have chosen to be there. I can’t count the times when I have said yes, sure, of course, no problem, okay, I’ll be there, I’ll do it. My habit of over committing and over booking was in constant danger of sending me into overload. The process of learning to be me and being OK with saying no has shifted my perceived stress into genuine wellbeing. Everything I commit to I am all in, I know that this means I can’t say yes to everything. Take a look at your calendar from the past 30 days and you will see really look at where you are spending your time. Can you see what you are placing value on? Does it tell you what you want to hear?

more problems

How much of your energy aka thoughts aka time is spent trying to solve tomorrow’s problems? It is a losing battle to work from today to solve issues that could come up in the future. In a meeting with one of the people in my inner circle yesterday he shared with me how he was learning that things he thought would be hard were more often showing up as easy, and that what he thought would go smoothly would surprise him time and time again by being hard. We can plan and strategize and forecast endlessly, and yet it is impossible to solve tomorrow’s problems from today. Granted, as a leader your job is to see more and to see before, to look around the corner and anticipate what is coming in order to lead your team successfully. That’s not what I am talking about. I am talking about the thing we call worry. Achievers call it stress. It is the energy/time/thoughts we use up thinking about all the things that are not in our control.

The What Ifs. My son Nick’s third grade teacher is always quoted in our family for calling out “That is a what if question”. In other words, it hasn’t happened. You can create all kinds of scenarios in your mind with lots of juicy things that could happen and may happen and holy shit what if that happens. But the only way to deal with the inevitable sideswipes that come our way is in the moment. The work you invest on a daily basis on yourself and with the people you work with and with your family especially your kids, and again, ON YOURSELF, is what will give you the tools to solve the problems that will always arise as long as you are alive. Problems are inevitable. Trade not having enough customers for not having enough product to sell. Trade not having enough time with someone you are dating to figuring out how to co-habitate once you are living together. The secret is to see that every problem presents an opportunity. An opportunity to solve it and grow and trade it for a better quality problem.

assumptions

Question every assumption you’ve made that makes you feel bad. Is this how I want to feel? What questions have I been asking myself that give me this feeling?

Ask yourself empowering questions- what, who, when, where…NOT how or why (path to the pity party, stops creativity) If you fall into the pity party, set a deadline for it to run.

80% of results in life are based on your psychology, 20% on the mechanics. You may not be good at something, but that is because you have not yet developed the skills to be good at it.

backpacks

When James was in high school he and his friend Mike Zamzow went on a backpacking trip with the dads. Mike’s poor dad was trudging up that hill wondering why he was in such bad shape, lagging behind and huffing and puffing the whole way. They finally reached the summit and sat down to pull some beef jerky out and have a snack. Mike’s dad opens up the pack and reaches in, only to pull out lead weight after lead weight, as the other dad is chuckling beneath his breath at the joke. James learned that day to pack his own pack, he could have lugged a 4 course dinner up the hill had he traded the weights for something worthwhile. What if you put down the bag you are carrying. Take a look inside and see if you have been carrying lead weights up the mountain for so long that you don’t even realize it.

Someone hid them in your backpack and you thought you were carrying all you needed for the journey, but its all a practical joke played on you by the comedienne named FEAR. She isn’t trying to be funny, she really truly believes that you need to remember every mistake and painful experience you had in your life, so she engraved them on the bricks and put them in your pack and you have been carrying them along with you all the way up the mountain. From her perspective everything is out to get her. There are bad people and scary things that can happen. You can get your feelings hurt and your heart broken and feel embarrassment and loss and less than. She is so freaking scared of not being loved and of any discomfort that she holds on to every negative thing that has happened to you so that you can remember and avoid it next time. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. The bricks you carry are actually magnets. They are there in your pack, and they attract more of the same. Even the ones buried deep in the bag pull you into situations that remind you again and again what it feels like to be scared.

What if I told you that you don’t have to carry that stuff around anymore? What if you just put down the backpack, the one you didn’t even realize was full of fear, and felt the freedom and weightlessness of letting go? You can have the joy and lightness of a child, just let go of the fear. What is the worst thing that could happen? You could fall down, but you fell down before and got back up. You could lose everything, but you can’t lose yourself and your capacity to love and rebuild. You could fail, but you can learn.

everything is changing

One of the basic human needs that all of us share, although granted some of us more strongly than others, is the need for certainty. We like to know that the car will start, the double almond milk latte we order on Tuesday will taste the same as Friday’s, that our stock portfolio will be worth more in the future, that we will turn on the shower and hot water will come out. We get jobs, have relationships, teach our kids, train our employees, choose the cities where we live, even go into business for ourselves, and work to get our world in order. We coach and shuffle and move things around until we finally get to the sweet spot where its all operating “smoothly”. There you are, cruising along, albeit sometimes at high speed, and what happens? Life happens. The universe and the multitude of different people, personalities, nature…shifts and the unavoidable happens. Things change.

Change is the one and only thing that is constant. The world is always evolving, moving, shaking, growing, dying. I don’t know why it always catches me by surprise, but there you go. In the best cases it is subtle, and we don’t notice it daily, like aging and our kids getting taller, but the biggest struggles happen when we get caddywomped by a big one. You lose a big client, you get fired, the market crashes, you lose someone…Life.

Change is never painful, only resistance to change is painful. –Buddha

Unfortunately there is no shortcut around the pain that we feel when we have to alter our inner workings, change our psychology, accept the changes that happen whether we plan for them or not. You can read all you want but the only way out of the pain is through it, by feeling it and accepting the feelings, and remembering what we all know deep inside at our core, that change is inevitable. No matter how much money you make, how perfect you make your world, your level of success, things are always changing. No matter how painful it is, you can’t put the fire out by focusing your energy on it, that just feeds the flames and makes it grow.

Feel that fire and see that it has the potential to free you from your old beliefs, beliefs that you may not even realize you have, that you are not enough, that you don’t have enough, that you are not perfect just as you are. Remember that everything changes, and that you are not alone on this journey, we are all here with you, at different stages on the path.

journey to presence

I can look back at my entire life and appreciate and notice how everything I have experienced has allowed me to grow. Some of the most painful experiences are the greatest teachers.

I spent so much time and energy looking for the secret- how to be happy, not realizing it is just a choice. So liberating to get that. To realize that no matter what happens during this life experience, I an have peace and joy if I jut center myself, and remember that I am here to enjoy life.

The big revelation for me right now is to surrender. That means to stop resisting what is in my life. By resisting or having ANY resentment or negativity towards my current situation, I am blocking any transformation, and really perpetuating more of the very thing I am rejecting.

It is one thing to intellectually know something to be true, to read, learn study. That is all very right brained – to really know something you need to know it/accept it with your heart, or your true self. This means to surrender. You can never figure out how to do this with your mind, it is the examiner examining itself. The fish asking what is water.

The ego wants certainty – this is what keeps it safe.

We don’t realize we are powerful beings, and our reality is our own creation. Change the way you look at your life situations- attach a new meaning.

This is happening FOR me ((to learn and grow)) not TO me ((victim))

Everything is constantly changing. That is the only certainty there is. The world of things will always grow then die. The only thing that never changes is your true self.

conditions

The act of giving with no intent to receive anything back is the most profound thing we can do. I think the tendency to keep score is so subtle and hides so deeply inside our psyche that it doesn’t come into our awareness until we feel the scales have tipped too far out of balance for us. I think this is the root of many conflicts we have with the people we love. As long as things are groovy, and the other person is following our rules on how they “should act if they love us”, we are good with it. Once they break one of our rules, (which are our own self created definitions for behavior), how easy it is to fall into the trap of looking at the score. Breaking the cycle of this for that is the process of learning to give unconditionally. To give money anonymously, to do something kind for someone and not tell a soul, to say yes when someone asks for a hand without questioning if it will ever come back to you. These are the things we can hold only ourselves accountable for as we proceed through this life we are so blessed to live.

I am so blessed to have a partner who is such a perfect match for me, he loves me and supports me and has allowed me the freedom to grow and change throughout our relationship. I have also witnessed him growing and evolving as well with me. I’ll admit that for him the “rules of relationship” were much less strict than mine early in our relationship. We laugh now when he reminds me of when he learned about my “birthday rule”. I was raised in a very tight family, and birthdays were sacred. That meant a big party for the guest of honor, and all family members joined to celebrate. My sister and I had come up with the “birthday weekend” which then extended into the “birthday week”, during which the birthday person pretty much ruled and got to do whatever they liked- which usually translated in our family into spending time together with the people closest to us.

I remember the first year that James and I were together, and his birthday came along. He planned a big guys trip to the Black Rock Desert, with motorcycles and target shooting and all kinds of guy fun. I was quietly upset the week before as he planned it, but did not say anything to him about why. He intuitively knew something was wrong, but I was stubbornly resistant to telling him how I felt. My “rules” were that if he really cared about me he would want to spend his special day with me. AND that if he really knew me he should know why I was upset. I know that many people fall into these assumptions, that the partner we are with should know what we are thinking. We think that our rules are universal, and that they are absolute. We get into relationships with the belief that this person will not push our limits or make us upset. I was passive aggressive, meaning that I was in denial of being upset with him and treated him with a cool shoulder for an entire week after he returned. He finally broke through the ice and convinced me to talk to him. When I put into words how I felt it was ridiculous to hear myself. It was so selfish and the opposite of love that I was ashamed. I realized how much work I had to do still to learn to give unconditionally, to stop keeping score, and to truly love someone. I have been presented with many more tests throughout our relationship, and each one is a lesson and reminder to me of the way to love. You can read as much as you want about the way to love, but the real teacher is the process of making the decisions in every situation to give, to love, unconditionally.

motivation and resistance

When I was a runner, I realized that motivation was not something that you waited for. It is created by just doing it. Motivation comes when you want the payoff no matter what the work involved. There were countless times when the last thing I wanted to do was lace up my running shoes and head out the door. The only way I was able to continue on my training course was to close off the part of my mind that was telling me I don’t feel like running today, its too hot, I’m tired, I can skip a day… and just do it. This is easier sometimes than others, it helps to remember how great it feels after you are done.

Your inner saboteur can talk you into or out of anything. The voice in your head never goes away. As human beings we have a will that is stronger than the doubting fearful self that usually runs the show. How many times have you had an idea that was so inspired, you were excited and it felt right? what happens when you don’t act on it? For me it fizzles and dies due to lack of momentum. Maybe in your excitement you share it with someone, even someone who you trust and that loves you and cares about you. You forget the fact that everyone has their own independent world view, needs, and priorities. Maybe in their love for you, they project their own fears and give you all the reasons why you should not do something- they are well-meaning nay-sayers. Since they care about you, they don’t want to see you fail or get hurt. They can’t imagine a worse fate than failure.

We are creatures of unlimited potential for growth. Our lives, failures, and successes up until this point have perfectly prepared us for what we are currently experiencing in our lives. The challenges will come no matter what we do to create a perfect world for ourselves. It is up to us to look at each situation that makes us uncomfortable, scared, stressed, nervous, bored, angry, anxious or sad as opportunities to learn and grow.

The emotions that we identify as negative can only be defeated by love and acceptance. If you resist the negative emotion, you are feeding it more negative energy, which will take you deeper into the emotion!

When I feel what I perceive as a negative emotion, I have learned to embrace and welcome them. Feelings like uncomfortable and scared. These to my are messages that something new and unpredictable is coming my way. Something I have not done before, or that entails stepping outside of the self imposed boundaries of my comfort zone. These feelings come up for me when I need to deal with difficult people, people I perceive as being more successful than I am, when it comes to spending money, launching new business ventures, and more.

Stressed or bored are two sides of the same coin for me. I have come to realize that my life flows in a series of waves of these two emotions, with (longer) periods of flow in between. When I am stressed, it usually happens because I have a lot of projects or goals on my plate, and have not yet figured out how to get the help I need. Bored can happen when all the work I have done to make the stress disappear is successful, and the lack of stimulation can cause me to think “boredom”. I don’t fall into the boredom trap as much as I did in the past because I know that I have the ultimate power over my emotions. I can look at a quiet day as relaxing, I can add variety to my life in so many different ways if I truly need it. I can reach out to a friend and offer my listening ear. I can be grateful. I can get out there and move.

The most important thing for me to remember is that emotions are transient. They come and they go, just like leaves blowing in the wind, or clouds in the sky. If you grab onto them, they act like sticky sap, and attract more of the same. One constant in this life is change. When things are great, they will change; when things are bad, they will change. When we attach ourselves to things being a specific way in order for us to be happy, we are setting up for pain.

Find the place in yourself where you are real love and joy. This is your true state. You are perfect just the way you are. Love yourself first, and the love and patience you can give will multiply. That is the secret to a joyful life.

“I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there.”― Mother Teresa

freedom

This July 4th I am more consciously aware of the freedoms we take for granted, and the one that is our base innate freedom that many of us don’t embrace. I am talking about the freedom of thought. We have absolute control over what we think about, and no matter what our life situation, we have the freedom to choose the meaning we give to what we experience. I am not in any way discounting the feelings of grief, pain and oppression, but I am talking about thoughts here, not emotions.

Thoughts are a little like habits. Its like when you go to Baskin Robbins and look at their 31+ flavors and default to Rocky Road. Or when faced with a big menu your choice is a Caesar Salad. There are so many choices, why do we always go with more of the same? We have pathways in our brain that the more we follow them (the thoughts) the stronger the path gets. Its a giant network of cables in there, and every time you follow the cable that leads to your disempowering thoughts, it wraps another layer around the original cable, making it stronger. It takes a tremendous strength of will to start untangling the cables and choose a different path.

I am here to tell you that it is possible, and we all have that strength inside us. It means becoming self aware, aware of your thoughts and the effect they have on your emotions. I know it is possible because I am doing it. If I can do it, I promise so can you. I was one of the most unaware self imposed helplessly slaved to my thoughts person you can think of. I truly believed that I could not control what I was feeling. To finally recognize the truth that I am in control of that inner voice was the beginning of the true freedom to enjoy this life to the fullest.

pity party

You are at the pity party. You are the guest of honor, along with the why’s. Why does this always happen to me? Why do I even try? Why am I so stupid/gullible/lame? Why does he/she always do that to me? The why’s are so seductive. They just love pity parties. Their specialty is killing creativity. They are quick retrievers of all the memories and dis-empowering beliefs that are buried in your consciousness. They even make up some, and are so convincing that when you are at the pity party you believe them.

So how to break the spell? You have to set a deadline. When you become aware that you are at the party (sometimes it can take a while to realize this), set a deadline for the end. Like soon, later today at the latest. Easier read than done, you say? Well start practicing. Notice the why’s, and change them to wise. Wise questions are the ones you ask that inspire creativity.
What is this emotion trying to tell me?
Who can I enlist to help with this?
What else could this mean?
What is good about me?
When did I feel this way before and what did I do to get over it?

“We must cultivate our garden.” – Voltaire